(Almost) every Saturday we review all Kickstarter campaigns in the "Games" category ending in the next week. We do a quick write up on anything we find notable here. This is written from the perspective of people looking to buy games and game accessories that offer interesting mechanics or ideas. We prefer heavy strategy games, RPG Games, miniature-heavy games, and games with real-time mechanics as opposed to party games, children's games, or very light strategy games.

We Backed

Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is. These are the campaigns we backed in this batch.

This is the latest from Artipia Games, a Greek board games company well known for publishing last year’s hit Kitchen Rush. What got us really excited about this is it that it is designed by Konstantinos Kokkinis, best known for creating the amazing Project Elite (7.7 BGG) (which is actually CMON’s next game as well.)

The theme here is amazing. The main character is a thief who has discovered a mystical hourglass that allows him to cross timelines and alter time. Each player is representing a different timeline for the Thief, trying to create the least dangerous, but most rewarding path for the Thief to travel.

Board Games

Thieves’ Den is a mixed strategy game that incorporates drafting and action selection. You and your fellow players are competing thieves trying to obtain the most prestige (VP) by acquiring artifacts and performing daring heists. This game is in the universe of 10-Minute Heist (6.6 BGG), which we backed, but was not a favorite of ours.

This is a low-budget game that tasks players with sliding tiles around a grid to fufill mission cards. You’ll be using Knights and Wizards to slide tiles, attempting to meet the requirements put forth on a card, which earns Victory Points. Looks like it might be a lot of fun, but it looks unlikely to hit its goal.

This is a pretty cool take on the standard 4X strategy game. Here you’ll take charge of a faction and play it through a branching campaign that is affected by the actions you take in each game. I’m looking forward to giving it a try on Tabletopia.

This is the third book in a post-apocalyptic gamebook series I hadn’t seen before. It has a really interesting setting that is reminiscent of Mutant Crawl Classics/Gamma World. I love the artwork here, and it’s a good setting for a gamebook (one I haven’t seen before.) While I didn’t back this Kickstarter, I did buy book one from Amazon.

This is yet another fighting card-dueling game (there have been several in the last few months.) This one is more of a standard deckbuilder, with Dazed cards getting added to your deck when you get punched, making it harder to stay up in the fight. While I really like the art that is here, the game is art-light with some boring cards. I think deckbuilders really need to have a lot of art to make them compelling for replay. For $19, this might be worth a look, but I’m over my September KS budget!

In Guild Master, you’ll be running an “adventurer’s guild” and attempting to build the most influential guild in the city (competing against the other players.) This looks like a neat game, and it includes some cool building vignettes for each player that double as player screens.

This is an update of a classic Martin Wallace (Discworld: Ankh-Morpork (7.2 BGG)) board game I’ve never played. Fantastically, this release caused the simultaneous release of the new edition on Tabletopia, which I plan to check out soon. The game itself is one with hidden roles, and completely rethemed to Victorian England. The game is filled with miniatures, and looks to be a real ultra-deluxe treatment of Wallace’s game which is rare for his heavier strategy games.

This is a spiritual sequel to the popular game Baseball Highlights: 2045 (7.6 BGG). The Highlights gameplay is deploying Highlight cards that both shape the way a “mini-game” is played, and helps build a players team. Interestingly, rather than implementing cybernetic enhancements as in Baseball, Football of the future uses more acrobatics, and modified rules to make for a more graceful game (and better head shock absorption.)

This is a second edition for a game that was released in 2015. In Pax Pamir (7.6 BGG), you’ll be playing Afghan rulers. The game has an elegant and deceptively minimalist design (I almost skipped this because I didn’t “get” the design aesthetic on first look.) This is a pretty heavy strategy game; players acquire cards and place them in their “Court” where they provide units that can be placed on the map. This game has a serious following, and this Kickstarter has raised over $200,000.

RPGs

This is a sort of alternate steampunk/cyberpunk setting for 5th Edition D&D steeped in Japanese culture. The original Kickstarter funded in 2016, and this one seeks to expand the material significantly with two new source books.

This one caught my eye because of the fantastic cover art. This is another 5e setting that looks like a lot of fun. Arkadia is attempting to adapt a fanastical version of Greece as a new setting for 5th Edition. Interestingly, they’ve key all of the Middle-Earth-inspired races and classes and worked their setting to fit them in.

Miniatures

Inspired by Dante’s Inferno, this is a series of ultra-high-quality miniatures designed for serious painters and collectors. It would be cool to break out a couple of these as demon bosses in a D&D campaign.

Miscellaneous

This just a nice set of tabletop RPG upgrades that a DM or a bunch of players could get to enhance the experience. The kit includes a chest, a bunch of metal coins and gems, and enhanced dice. This campaign is doing very well, which is nice, because I think it demonstrates there’s a hunger for people to upgrade their table play.

Darkraven Games is known for constantly releasing new music Kickstarters, and at least for me, charging a lot for their product. I find their competitors with alternate subscription services like Battle Bards, more interesting (although for now I just use Youtube for my games.) However, I really like the idea of enhancing a popular game with an official soundtrack, and that’s what we have here for Cthulhu Wars. Unfortunately, because of the outrageous prices ($30 for a regular set of MP3s, $60 for the FLAC versions), this KS is really struggling to get over the finish line.

This is a neat idea with nice design. The decks are used to build various dungeons as you go. I think larger cards to allow for 1” miniatures would be the way to go. Perhaps they’ll do that in the future.

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*None of the campaigns mentioned here are sponsored or influenced via payment, prize or other means. If we know or have a connection to someone running the campaign, we will mention it in the campaign notes. If there is a campaign you think should be mentioned here, please e-mail us and tell us what makes it special and we'll review!